Terrorism Archive

Earlier this month, Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi announced on state television that the country would be partitioned into six regions and renamed the Federal Republic of Yemen. The move came at the end of Yemen’s 10-month National Dialogue Conference (NDC), a process that was intended to help overcome ongoing tensions and grievances in the aftermath of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s forced resignation in November 2011. Saleh left office after 33 years in power, the first 12 in North Yemen and the last 21 in the combined North and South. He was finally pushed out after anti-government protests […]

There are two points of approximate consensus regarding the U.S. government’s Syria strategy. First, the U.S. should not send American troops to become directly involved in the fighting. All across the political spectrum in the U.S., among hawks and doves, the national sentiment strongly opposes sending U.S. forces to fight on the ground in Syrian battlefields. America is tired of sending its soldiers to die in Middle Eastern conflicts. The boots-on-the-ground option is off the table barring a dramatic development. The second point of growing agreement is that the Obama administration’s current approach to the Syrian conflict is a failure. […]

What do you see when you look at the Central African Republic (CAR)? The crisis in the previously largely unknown former French colony is becoming a Rorschach test for international policymakers. Few would deny that the CAR has endured a hellish breakdown of basic order that has claimed at least 2,000 lives and forced a quarter of the country’s 4 million citizens from their homes. But is this simply a humanitarian disaster that needs to be stopped through rapid military action? Or is it a case of a failed state that demands a long-term effort to rebuild the government’s capacity […]